


The place where everything is hidden and nothing is lost

by alltherecklesshours



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Multi, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Room of Requirement, his name is Alex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 06:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15746040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltherecklesshours/pseuds/alltherecklesshours
Summary: What if the Room of Requirement is still showing up to the students in need?What if the secrets hidden are still there somewhere?





	The place where everything is hidden and nothing is lost

**Author's Note:**

> So, I haven't posted anything fic-related in good... 10 years or so...? But this little something came and i thought why the hell not?
> 
> This is a headcanon where I refused to accept that the Room of Requirement just disappeared and that the original idea was for it to be just a place where people could hide things (you know, the version of the room where the Fiendfyre happened and all that). 
> 
> For now there's pretty much one original character and I have a few plans to keep it going and the tags will probably keep changing through it all, but right now I'm jittery and talking too much, so i'll just shut up. 
> 
> All mistakes are my own.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it. :)

Alex walked among the corridors without a previous defined destination, he just walked, walked and walked a bit more. It wasn’t like he was running away, no, he just didn’t want to sit and rest right now, he could walk a bit more. If he felt his heart race when he heard strong footsteps behind him, just on the corner of the corridor he had just entered himself, it was just caution, just like his movement of entering the first door he found after thinking he just wanted a place to hide, a place no one could ever find him, never again, if possible. After he closed the door quickly, his heart took a few deep breathes to calm down and his brain another few to go back to work and recognize what was going on around him. 

The first thing he noticed was the smell. It smelled like a fireplace that had only ashes – Alex knew that smell very well since he used to clean all the fireplaces in the manor before coming to school. And the air was as cold as it had always been inside those same fireplaces. Then he realized how huge that room was, the ceiling high as the one in the Great Hall, the same arcs and the pillars, everything black and burnt. The light came from torches high up on the walls, on weird positions, burnt as well, but inexplicably still hanging and doing their jobs. 

Taking all that in was as eerie as it was exciting, and he felt his heart start racing again. The silence was deep and Alex felt everything would crumble if he moved. He decided to listen through the door and ignore, for a while, all the rest, thinking to himself it would be better if he just went back to his dormitory and stayed there the rest of the weekend. He could hear no noises outside, but he would wait a bit longer just in case and he would also avoid looking around again. He would try, at least… His curiosity was always bigger than him though. He turned around again and went back to taking it all in, the blackness, the smell, the cold, the size… How could a room that size, having clearly burnt for a long time, exist in the castle and no one ever talk about it? Of course it looked like it had burnt many, many years ago, but still… It made no sense. 

He took a step and the sound echoed through the walls like a whole army marching. He took another one and another one and he realized his shoes were as pristine as they were before he entered that place. That shit really made no sense at all, with that amount of ashes coating every corner of the room, his shoes should be as black as the floor itself. He should just leave, however, the next step was taken and then another and, to this day, he doesn’t know how, but he reached the middle of the room and everything looked even bigger, including the echoes of his shoes against the floor. 

There was nothing there but ashes pilled over ashes and he really should leave and go back to his dormitory, he really should. Professor Longbottom said he was hanging by one warning before detention and he should keep that in mind and stay out of trouble, he really should. And he was going to do exactly that when he heard the first whisper. He froze and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand, and then everything was quiet again. It was his cue to leave. He turned around to start walking back to the door, but another whisper happened and then another and another. When he thinks about that now, he classifies this happening as intriguing, but at the moment it was absolutely terrifying. 

However, once again, his curiosity took the best of him and he knew there was no one else there with him. He could just leave, but he knew he would be thinking of that again and again if he didn’t try to find out what it was. It’s what they say about Gryffindors, after all, always reckless and most times irresponsible. He followed the whispers, of course he did. They were coming from somewhere close to the walls to his left and the more he walked towards them the scarier they sounded and the more curious he became. That couldn’t be healthy in any way possible. 

Touching the wall came to him as an instinct and, all of a sudden, the whispers stopped completely. He waited, but nothing happened. He moved his hand to another part of the wall and still nothing happened. The wall was cold and, opposite to his shoes still being as clean as they were before, the ashes began to paint his hand and the wrist of his shirt black, but he didn’t care, he felt like he should keep moving along that wall and he wasn’t a person to deny his instincts. 

For five or six steps nothing happened, and, with no reasonable explanation or previous warning, the wall began to get warm against his hand, he thought he was just imagining it. To prove himself it was just his imagination, he touched his other hand to the same part of the wall and there it was, warm. You might say he should’ve stopped right there and run for his life, but all Alex thought was that he was already too deep into finding out what the hell was that all about. 

He now kept running both of his hands on the wall and it happened, between two large pillars, the fire started. It was small, compared to the greatness of the wall, and controlled and all Alex could think of was how, in a pretty much dead room, a fire was starting like that? Magic was a weird thing, he concluded while taking a step back from the wall and, after deciding the fire wasn’t eminent danger on his life, he walked towards it and it took him no time to notice there was something being written with it.

“The place where everything is hidden and nothing is lost”, it said. 

Alex looked around and thought that that didn’t make any more sense than everything that had happened from the moment he set foot in the room. There was nothing there. Nothing was hidden there. “Maybe in the past there was…”, he completed out loud and his voice, as low as it was, echoed through the whole room. He looked back at the wall and the words were still burning and the whispers started again, louder and clearer this time, they sounded… They sounded like confessions, secrets… Like the ones you tell only to your pillow – or not even to it, sometimes. He closed his eyes and tried to make some of them out, but they were so many… He heard names, verbs, he heard hurtful crying and cheerful laughing, sniffs coming from one side and secretive giggles coming from the other, everything was so overwhelming and he couldn’t find it in himself to stop listening. Until they stopped again and a loud crack brought him back to the empty room. His attention was back to the wall, where he thought the crack had come from, and he saw the bricks start moving, almost like they do on Diagonal Alley, except that it was only part of the wall opening a hole not higher than Alex’s waist. 

He is not sure for how long that went on, but he remembers everything going silent once again and the hole on the wall casting a weak light, calling his attention to whatever there was inside. At first, he thought it was empty and everything was just a trick from Peeves, but looking closer he saw a chest so old with a locker so heavy and rusty that he was sure it would never open. He kneeled in front of it and dragged it away from the hole, trying the locker just to find it very well closed, he then sighed and reached for his wand inside of his robes. It seemed silly now to get his wand to fight against whatever it was inside that chest, since the room could’ve swallowed him and nobody outside would ever notice, but he did it anyway and he definitely wasn’t expecting for the Alohomorra spell to work when he tried, but it did. And everything went white and all Alex could think was if this is death please let it be quick and painless.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reaching the end. 
> 
> Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? Should I continue? Kudos would make me immensely happy. :) <3


End file.
